Optical fibers have been used to transmit optical signals between chips. In such systems, optical interfaces have been provided on each of the chips to optically couple the optical fiber to optical waveguides on the respective chips. This allows electrical signals on the respective chips to be converted into optical signals and then transmitted between the chips on the optical fiber. The optical interfaces can be diffraction gratings or silicon optical metamaterials, for example. However, these optical interfaces tend to be quite lossy, leading to inefficiencies in the optical connections between the chips.
Other structures have used dielectric optical waveguides for optical transmission between chips. In these arrangements, optical transceivers are used for directly transmitting the light to dielectric optical waveguides. In conjunction with this, PIN detectors can be placed above the dielectric optical waveguides. However, such dielectric optical waveguides are highly lossy, again creating significant inefficiencies in the data transmission.